If it doesn’t fit, then you must split

There’s a lot more to a business relationship than money
 
Show of hands: How many of you recognized the Johnnie Cochran reference in this article’s headline? 
 
How many of you have even heard of Johnnie Cochran? 
 
Not important for this article and its takeaways. But we couldn’t resist. (Here’s a cheat-sheet, if you’re curious.) 
 
Here’s the point: When you make the commitment to a new client or job, you’re committing to a lot more than getting the job done. You’re committing to doing the best by your client, and by your business, at the same time.
 
That’s why that initial commitment you make—your go/no-go decision—is so huge. It’s not about the project. It’s about the fit. The longer we’re in business, the more we see this to be true, every single day. We recently had an experience that sparked this topic, and we’ll get to it in a minute. But first, let’s look at “what a good fit” is, and isn’t. 
 
What must fit?
 
As a consultant, you’ve got a variety of skills. These translate to a menu of offerings. For them, you charge a certain range of prices. So that would seem to delineate the whole problem, right? Skills, offerings, pricing. 
 
If only it were that simple. 
 
Not to exclude those parameters—they’re important. But to make your clients happy, to help them actually succeed and get better at what they do, while making yourself happy and poising yourself to grow your business, you need to weigh in more factors than those. 
 
Let’s start with the obvious, and parse those three attributes first. 

• Skills. Your skill set is based on your experience and expertise. Sure, you like to grow and stretch your muscles, but don’t go for cramps. If that new prospect is waving dollars your way, but needs skills that you don’t have, politely pass. You’ll sleep better. You won’t set yourself up to fail. And that prospect may well come knocking again, for your exact services, especially now that they respect your professionalism and candor. 

 

• Offerings. Same case here. Don’t get us wrong: There will be times when your experience in Realms A and B provide the perfect setup for a Realm C offering, due to overlap and/or synergies. In which case, yes, that’s a wonderful fit. And it’s also a time for candor. Tell your prospect exactly that. (We just helped a client of ours with this exact communication challenge: They had tons of experience helping clients with “Challenge B” which, as it turns out, is downstream of/helps to manage the fallout of Challenge A. So we crafted messaging to new “Challenge A Prospects,” in which we said, basically, “Hey, all our experience with Challenge B can help you with Challenge A, because we know what kinds of things fall through the cracks in the first place!” It was a creative, and effective, spin on “Hey, we’ve never done this before, but boy would it ever be a great fit.”)

 

• Pricing. You need to stay within your comfort zone here. If you find yourself low-balling your own prices before you start, or perhaps agreeing to 90-day terms when you don’t accept them, hit the Pause button. That smacks of desperation—and will invariably come back to bite you later. The last thing you want is to find yourself, at some time in the future, resenting that new client or the project you’d agreed to… especially if you’re the one to blame for undercutting yourself unnecessarily. 

 
So those are the obvious “fit” issues. Here are some others, which may not be as obvious: 

• Timing. Some prospects have a “drop-everything” approach to deadlines—as in, it doesn’t matter what you’ve got on your plate, they want it now/you need to push back all your other clients. If that works for you, great. Go for it. Personally, it doesn’t work for us. We always maintain a degree of scheduling cushion to accommodate client exigencies, but that kind of “blow off everyone else for me” approach doesn’t work for us. It’s not a good fit. 

 

• Ethics. Not long ago, we were approached by a prospect whose business we couldn’t quite figure out. What were they selling? To whom? It wasn’t very clear. This was a red flag right away, regardless of their apparently very deep pockets. It didn’t take much digging around the internet to discover that their business was operating in a gray area of legality; indeed, we learned of this by finding all the lawsuits that were being pressed against them. Reading about these, all the hazy details came into focus: They had been purposely made unclear, to confuse consumers/sow distrust… the basis for all the lawsuits. We politely declined. Bottom line: Trust your gut. If you get a bad feeling about a new prospect, there’s a reason. 

 

• Politics. Here at Copel Communications, we’re expressly apolitical. That said, it doesn’t mean that we don’t have our own personal political viewpoints; ditto for our clients and prospects. Things only become a problem if politics get in the way. We’ve actually written for genuine political campaigns, on either side of the aisle, and we’re fine with that, so long as the case we’re being asked to present is cogent and compelling. But that’s not what we’re talking about here. You want to avoid getting in bed with a client who’s going to make you feel uncomfortable, simply in the context of doing your work. If you find yourself biting your tongue before you even start, you might want to reconsider. Is that really “a good fit”? 

 

• Personality. We generally consider ourselves fortunate in this does-it-fit category, but it’s really somewhat self-selecting. If all of the other factors above—skills, offering, pricing, timing, ethics, and politics—align, then the odds are strong that there won’t be any personality conflicts, either. We can handle lots of different personality types, from the warm-and-fuzzy to the in-your-face; all we require is candor. If you detect (usually after the fact) evidence of prevarication or elusiveness, watch out. That never ends well. 

 
We’d mentioned above that a recent event sparked this blog topic. And here’s what it was: Not long ago, we were contacted by a client from our distant past. It was really neat to reconnect with them, and it was fun to catch up. At the same time, that client’s needs had shifted in one direction, and our offerings had shifted in another. It seemed like it might still be a good fit again, after all this time, but in short order, both parties realized that that wasn’t the case. We parted ways early, before things could get sticky. More importantly, we parted ways amicably. No lost sleep on either side. 
 
If you’ve got communication challenges on your plate, you don’t have to worry if they’d be a good fit, or not, with us. Why? Because we’ll tell you! Contact us today to book that first, assuredly candid, conversation. 

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